In Burlington, Christmas is mostly quiet

Published: Tuesday, December 25, 2012 at 06:52 PM.

Whether
Burlington
and the rest of
Alamance
County
were closed for Christmas depends on where you went and what you tried to do.

Certainly, streets were empty compared to the hectic activity that went on Christmas Eve and will likely return to a significant degree today.

Most retail stores, restaurants and grocery stores were closed, but there were exceptions.

Convenience stores and gas stations were the prime example. Not all were open, but at Sheetz on
Alamance Road
, travelers were lined up with tickets waiting on their food orders. The store’s 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week schedule was unchanged for the holiday.

At the store’s locally owned counterparts, people outside were putting gas in the tanks of cars, trucks and SUVs while those inside were buying everything from milk and Gatorade to beer and cigarettes.

Some things were mostly unchanged, but with a Christmas twist. Skateboarders were in their usual hang-outs; one near downtown
Burlington
wore a Santa hat.

At the Alamance County Magistrate’s Office in Graham, the crime scene was relatively quiet apart from a string of arrests for driving while impaired beginning in the late afternoon Christmas Eve and running into the early hours of Christmas Day.

Whether Burlington and the rest of AlamanceCounty were closed for Christmas depends on where you went and what you tried to do.

Certainly, streets were empty compared to the hectic activity that went on Christmas Eve and will likely return to a significant degree today.

Most retail stores, restaurants and grocery stores were closed, but there were exceptions.

Convenience stores and gas stations were the prime example. Not all were open, but at Sheetz on Alamance Road, travelers were lined up with tickets waiting on their food orders. The store’s 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week schedule was unchanged for the holiday.

At the store’s locally owned counterparts, people outside were putting gas in the tanks of cars, trucks and SUVs while those inside were buying everything from milk and Gatorade to beer and cigarettes.

Some things were mostly unchanged, but with a Christmas twist. Skateboarders were in their usual hang-outs; one near downtown Burlington wore a Santa hat.

At the Alamance County Magistrate’s Office in Graham, the crime scene was relatively quiet apart from a string of arrests for driving while impaired beginning in the late afternoon Christmas Eve and running into the early hours of Christmas Day.

Sometimes happier activity happens at the office when people show up to get married. None had done that as of about 3 p.m. on Christmas, but magistrate Susan Wortinger reported marrying a couple on Christmas Eve.

Movies were a major exception to holiday closings.

At Carousel Cinemas in Alamance Crossing, theaters opened at 2 p.m. with offerings such as “Les Miserables,” “The Hobbit: Part 1” and “Django Unchained,” a Quentin Tarantino movie about slavery. (At GrahamCinema, the choices were “Hotel Transylvania” and “Taken 2”).